


pero yo, la que te mece

by redandgold



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, still upsetting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 01:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5356487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David leaves. Philip leaves. Gary didn't think he'd leave, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pero yo, la que te mece

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  All notes are below because I hate gary fucking neville  
> Order: Beville - Broville - Carraville  
> I've also never written Carragher before so I'm really sorry >>

**Pero yo, la que te mece**

_But I, the one who rocks you_

 -

 

The first time you say goodbye, Spain takes your heart.

It’s done over a cup of coffee and two blueberry cheesecakes, one uneaten, the other in crumbs. You’re licking your fork when he puts his down and you open your mouth to ask if he’s going to eat that when he opens his mouth to tell you he’s leaving.

As he exhales, you become acutely aware of the smoothness of the dark liquid in his cup. His breath collects on the surface, breaking gently into ripples. “The seaside’s nice this time of year,” you say, distantly surprised with how calm you are, like watching a ship sink from the shore.

He says kindly, “you don’t have to pretend.”

You learn to hate Madrid, with its high windows and orange-gold sunsets. It’s only two hours away, and he texts you every year telling you about his place (not that your thumb ever touches send, just backspace). It’s only driving to London. Every year you watch the Champions League draw and unclench your fist when you don’t hear the name. It’s only a boy. One thing you come to realise about international duty is that you don’t take the same flights home.

 

* * *

 

The second time you say goodbye, Spain takes your soul.

It’s done over a phone call, you expect to rib him about being glad Match of the Day had him because it’s vastly lowered the standard of the competition. Instead he tells you Match of the Day doesn’t have him anymore, Valencia does.

You wonder if Spain has something against you, if it likes watching you crack, watching the grin slip off your face for zero point three seconds before you glue it back on, even if he can’t see you. “God,” you say, “you’re going to get sunburnt.”

He laughs. Once you wrote in your book _you just can’t fall out with Philip_ , but you just can’t fall out of him either. He’s the boy you kick the guts out of in a Bury park for doing another stepover, the boy whose wounds you have bandaged and bones you have healed. You remember how nervous he was at his wedding, quivering like a leaf, and the way he smiled when you said, grudgingly, that he made a decent captain, even if he had to be Scouse.

"I've been learning Spanish," he says. 

"What's sunburn in Spanish?" 

"Haven't got there yet."

"Is there anything you  _can_ say?" you laugh, remembering the first golden haired boy, struggling through TV interviews with the same determination you fell in love with, all those years ago.

"Yeah." There's a rustling of pages, and he pauses, haltingly spelling out the words. " _Te quiero, hermano mayor._ " 

"What does that mean?" 

"This mayo is really good." 

You never commentate on a Valencia game, content with making up silly Spanish translations on Twitter, with leaving it to your parents and sister to tell him how proud they are. You wish away the sun-baked streets and the pictures of paella he keeps sending (though those make you smile, just a little). ‘Good win @fizzer18’, you type after his first, wondering if he will know what you are really saying. Maybe the lesson Spain is trying to teach you is that it’s okay to care, even if you don’t think so, and bury your feelings behind hashtags.

 

* * *

 

The third time you say goodbye, Spain takes you.

It’s done through the horrified gasps of the football world and a level of exposure calling people naïve and arrogant would never have given you. There is the furious typing, retyping of _BREAKING:_ and you wonder, as your phone starts ringing, if news is the only thing that breaks.

“Jesus, Neville,” his voice is cranking down your ear, as pitchy and craggy and hundred-miles-an-hour as it goes, “are you really fucking off to Spain? Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve made Ed run through three hours of Liverpool last Monday, sod the game – ”

And you almost drop your phone, because you never thought you’d be on this side, because you’ve been there so often that you can hear yourself, the flippant comment that doesn’t mean anything and everything, the twinge in his voice he hasn’t nearly had as much practice hiding. Last September, twelve years ago, you were the one learning how to breathe all over again.

“Shut up,” you say (breathe whisper sigh). “You’re coming over, aren’t you?”

A car honks in the driveway and you tilt your head towards the window to see that maddening grin, all zero point three seconds of it. “Open the door, for Christsake,” he says. “It’s November and I’m not going to die in Manchester.”

You cross to the door, the handle cold in your hands as you pull it open. He dumps his coat on the sofa and flops down next to it, running a hand over the black leather, and you catch a flash of memory in his face, when you picked Kagawa over De Bruyne and had such a howler with Harry Kane that he almost kicked in your table.

After a beat, he says, “step up, eh?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” You grin. “Philip’s definitely easier on the eyes.”

“Bite me.” He turns on the TV, where Liverpool are playing. The score is three one, and you feel a flicker of annoyance despite yourself. He catches it (always does) and laughs. “Don’t do anything stupid, now, old man. I don’t want to have to call Webb down and send you off on your own turf.”

“I’m not an old man.”

“All managers are old men.”

He’s not smiling anymore, and you wonder if he’s wondering whether the distance from Liverpool to Valencia is the same as the distance from Liverpool to L. A.

You have no excuses. You try to think of what David and Philip offered you, what you can offer him, and draw blanks, like the corner flag fluttering on an empty pitch. You think, suddenly, how you will not sit in Old Trafford for the next six months, be it in the commentary box or the red plastic seats, and sun-baked streets are a poor substitute for the gloomy grey skies that tower above.

He shifts in his seat and draws you back (and you think how you won’t be in another red stadium come January 17; realise how different ‘wish there was MNF tomorrow @Carra23’ sounds from ‘MNF tomorrow @Carra23?’ – all the difference, all the difference in the world.)

“You still have that kit I gave you?” you ask, remembering another promise never fulfilled.

“Yeah.” He answers a little too quickly, smirks. “Under my pillow. I’m hoping it’ll deter the tooth fairy. Why?"

“No reason,” you say, glad that Spain hasn’t taken all of you, at least.

He watches the game, you watch him. The way he talks over the commentary with useless comments of his own, yelling at Sturridge to get in, Bodgan to hold his fucking line. Sometimes you interject, grudgingly giving Klopp the credit he deserves. It’s only in the eighty third minute you realise that he’s not saying Origi is a genius, he’s saying no one wants to grow up to be a Gary Neville. He’s saying you’d be under the bed, and you’re saying he’d be the burglar. It’s like having to choose between two blokes to nick your wife. Stephane Henchoz runs past him, too.

The first thing he does when the game is over is tweet. You look at your feed, like it, scroll down. “Who’s Pegguy Arphexad?” you ask, jokingly.

“My best friend,” he replies, jokingly, but not joking, and not talking about him.

For two people who talk for a living, there is surprisingly nothing to say. Only questions hang in the air, waiting to be asked, like _are you going to miss me_ and _are your Mondays going to be the same_ and _do you think it’ll be okay_. You figure you’ve never said _I love you_ and it would be pointless to start now.

He breathes in sharply. “Was it always like this?” he asks.

You look at him, another golden haired boy. “I never had to pretend,” you say.

 

* * *

 

Just before the flight, your phone buzzes. You flick through the article, the corner of your lips tugging up as all your questions are answered. You send him a tweet. He texts back two seconds later: _just all right?_

You reply, _can’t understand a word you’re saying._

The plane retracts its wheels and you look down, the red-bricked roofs of Manchester falling away as they’ve done so many times before. One more chapter to finish and dust down on the shelf to which this baking, high-windowed country belongs. But chapters cannot be finished without beginning. And you will have the story, no matter how it ends. As the plane tilts, you catch a glimpse of sunlight peeking through the clouds on the horizon, warm and grave and glittering. Maybe never happily ever after, but always once upon a time.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>   ok fic explanation first angst later I've been meaning to write Carraville for a while because all you non-United fans were giving me feelings and I felt like I had to keep the balance and be the United side of this trash fandom (but it was goign to be HAPPY they were going to be my HAPPY CRACK SHIP and now it's NOT) ergo the main focus of this is actually the Carraville! Gasp of shock and horror (plus I really write too much Beville as it is)
> 
> The Numero Uno thing with Gaz is Becks, right, and when Phil left I kept thinking about how he would be repeatedly reminded of the first time and wtf Phil AND THEN NOW HE'S LEAVING and I just thought like fucking Spain man so I wanted to write something that wrapped all of them up together but was also separate - the way he loves these three are so so different so incredibly complex and Gary is such a complex lil shit he's got so many facets and things and sides 
> 
> And then halfway through I got so emotional thinking about all the MNF banter?? So that paragraph about Stephane Henchoz - I'm lazy to find the links but I've [giffed most of it here](http://paulscholes.co.vu/tagged/jamie%20carragher) and damn I'm gonna miss all this (there's also the references to the Fifa 16 video in the De Bruyne bit and the 'can't understand a word you're saying') /nostalgia
> 
> The title, 'but I, the one who rocks you' is from a poem by [Gabriela Mistral](http://spanishpoems.blogspot.co.uk/2005/06/gabriela-mistral-yo-no-tengo-soledad.html) and I just thought it was a really beautiful line. The line that Phil says: 'Te quiero, hermano mayor' is (according to google translate) 'i love you, big brother'. I have a lot of Broville feels do not get me started
> 
> I'm not sure about the ending I kinda wanted it to mean that there will always be the stories left behind, even if they might be left or broken or destroyed - but I realise it can be read as this is a new beginning for Gaz which i didn't really mean for it to be so yeh read it as the first
> 
> I think that's it??? Sorry for the rambling omg and thank you for reading <3 ANGST FOLLOWS PLS IGNORE
> 
>  
> 
> when Phil Neville left for Valencia in the summer, I changed my url from philipneville to gazneville and disowned my Phil bear (yes I have two bears called Gaz and Phil THAT'S NOT THE POINT) for like weeks and changed my Broville wallpaper to Scheville instead and Phil isn't the Neville who's my favourite person in the world
> 
> So like this is...on another level... I don't even know how to describe it but I've just been generally dissolving I'm incredibly afraid for him I just want him to be happy and I'm going to miss his voice so much and I don't want to see him being torn down and destroyed :((((   
> But he'll be okay ah I have to believe that he'll be okay 
> 
> /ANGST OUT AMUNT VALENCIA ETC ETC


End file.
